Old Patriot's Pen

Personal pontifications of an old geezer born 200 years too late.

NOTE The views I express on this site are mine and mine alone. Nothing I say should be construed as being "official" or the views of any group, whether I've been a member of that group or not. The advertisings on this page are from Google, and do not constitute an endorsement on my part.

About Me

I've been everywhere That was the title of a hit country-and-western song from the late 1950's, originally sung by Hank Snow, and made famous by Johnny Cash. I resemble that! My 26-year career in the Air Force took me to more than sixty nations on five continents - sometimes only for a few minutes, other times for as long as four years at a time. In all that travel, I also managed to find the perfect partner, help rear three children, earn more than 200 hours of college credit, write more than 3000 reports, papers, documents, pamphlets, and even a handful of novels, take about 10,000 photographs, and met a huge crowd of interesting people. I use this weblog and my personal website here to document my life, and discuss my views on subjects I find interesting.

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Thursday, January 12, 2006

What a mess!

Our nation is a mess. We've seen the politicizing of everything from educating our children to taking care of our oldest citizens, and even the choice to have a child or not. Virtually nothing is off limits to the steady encroachment of government "oversight". In the middle of all this, we've been attacked by an outside enemy that intends on destroying not only the United States, but the entire non-Muslim (and much of the Muslim) world. While we try to fight against the Islamist fundamentalist terrorists, we're held back by moral relativists, political hacks more intent upon gaining personal political power than defending the nation as a whole, and a bunch of intellectual morons who believe we're the most evil nation on the planet. This nation's founders are reeling in disgust with the modern generation, and its lack of moral, ethical, intellectual, and personal strength.

The United States, indeed all non-Muslim (and many Muslim) governments as we know them, are under attack by a fundamentalist group that insist on the literal interpretation of the Quran, and the implimentation of a strict Islam-based world government that uses fundamentalist Islamic rules of justice. Such a government cannot be implemented by persuasion, so Islam is reverting to what worked in the 7th and 8th Century - forced conversions and fundamentalist testing of the "faithful". The Islamic fundamentalists are aided and abetted by those in this nation who refuse to acknowledge any good deriving from Western civilization, and the inherently flawed idea that "all cultures and mores MUST be considered equal".

Unfortunately, this is so blatantly false, and easily deduced from casual observation. Current western civilization is far advanced over the stone-age tribalism of many in the more remote portions of the world, and most of the tribalism that undelies governments in many nations. The citizens of the nations that embrace democratic forms of government, capitalist production and distribution, and personal charity when needed live longer, live healthier, respond quicker to catastrophies (and with more of everything), and enjoy life more. These citizens spend far less time and energy to satisfy basic needs, and have more time for other activities, such as art, literature, science, religion, and just plain goofing off.

Western civilization has a major advantage over the inherently tribalistic and monocentric "Islamic" (predominantly Arab tribal) civilization. Western civilization, as with western religion, are viewed as evolving, progressive movements. Islam is static: Mohammed was the last prophet, everyone MUST worship Allah as Mohammed laid out the laws, and although they're so deeply rooted in the 7th century, you have to apply them to the 21st century with equal validity. Closed societies don't grow, don't develop, and don't mature. They continue to do things the same way over long periods of time. Innovation, improvement, and growth are frowned upon, and are only grudgingly allowed, if allowed at all. Advances made by those outside the Islamic faith are viewed with suspicion and distaste - the refusal of Nigerian Muslims to allow polio vaccinations are one instance among thousands that prove the point.

Closed societies - those that don't accept change easily, and that believe all outsiders are "evil" (or "infidels") - tend to be dictatorial, tribalistic, and anti-social. Closed religions are worse - they tend to impose the most impossible burdens on people for little or no reason other than it was done at some point in the past, or it's been decided that such rules are the "word of God to man", and irrefutable, regardless of the contrary evidence one might be exposed to.

Islam isn't the only religion so stultifying: mondern "fundamentalists" are equally as harsh and unforgiving, regardless of the "clothes" (I.E., denomination) they wear. Yet according to the Bible, the Jews were chosen by YHWH, or Jehovah, or just plain "GOD", to be His chosen people. They were given strict rules on how they should set themselves apart from other people, so they could be identified as God's Chosen. Today there are very few clashes between the modern world and the Jewish people. They have learned to adjust to changes in the material world, while retaining their basic "Jewishness", or separation, as God's People.

Christianity has also learned to adjust to changes in the material world while retaining the basis of its faith. The problem with Christianity hasn't been the lack of adptivity, but too much willingness to change without fundamental evaluation of where those changes were leading. There are far too many people leading congregations today that have no real faith in a personal, living relationship with God. As a result, their congregations suffer, and many are led into things that have nothing to do with worshiping the Creator of the Universe. Church has gone from being a worshiping experience to being a social convenience. People truly searching for God, for "answers", for a change in their life, usually leave today's churches empty and disappointed.

One of the big problems of today is the difference between the interpretation of what one side believes their God says versus what the other side believes their God says. The belief that the God of the Old and New Testament and "Allah" are the same can only be held as long as one doesn't read the Quran. The contradictions, from the beginning to today, are too great to bridge. These differences are not only found in certain lifestyle demands, but also in the temperament of the two faiths. Judiasm and Christianity are both faiths that strongly embrace love, even the love of strangers. Islam is a religion of hate - hatred of anyone and everyone that isn't a "true believer". Both Judiasm and Christianity espouse the belief that following the path established by God in the Bible will lead to not only spiritual rewards, but also physical rewards upon Earth. Jews are the most successful single group of people on Earth. Christians fall somewhere in the middle - mainly because too few of them really have the faith they need to succeed. Both believe that hard work and dedication are needed to truly succeed at anything. Is this true also of Islam? Nothing that I've read in the last 50 years has given me that belief.

Also, too, Judiasm and Christianity both accept the concept of doubt: "is this really God's will, am I really doing the right thing, is this really what I should be doing, did God really speak to me". Jews and Christians both test themselves and their faith, and temper their beliefs in the fires of such doubt. Doubt is unIslamic. Everything that happens is the Will of Allah, and cannot be questioned.

Without questioning, there can be no growth. Without questioning the rightness or wrongness of a behavior, or a thought, or the words of another, there can be no growth of the individual. Without tempering, there can be no strength. Without introspection, evaluation, and decision, there can be no wisdom.

What has this to do with our nation? This nation was founded upon the beliefs in a "Generous and Almighty Creator", and based upon the morality of those who follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazereth, the Christ. It's predicated upon the morality of Christianity to sustain itself. Yet Christian morality - indeed, ANY "moral standard" - is under attack in the United States by those that have chosen to hate our past, and refuse to learn any of the many lessons that can be found in its history, both for good and bad. We've almost killed true religious dedication with pseudo-churches. We're fighting a life-or-death war with both hands and one foot tied behind us by "moral relativists", political hacks, and just plain blind fools. We live in an increasingly technological world, yet our schools are turning out intellectual illiterates. Portions of our society have tried to destroy such concepts as good and evil, while we fight a war against those that would impose even harsher concepts upon us by force.

It's time for a decision to be made. Each of us must make the decision for ourselves. We must either decide that we're going to fight for what we believe in, including personal freedom and individual liberty, or we must choose to surrender to those that would impose their will upon us. There is no "third way" - it's either one or the other. The dedication of those that truly believe in freedom and liberty will determine whether the nation our ancestors created for us will continue, or whether it will die. That decision has to be made soon, or or the decision may be imposed upon us by those who hate us most.